Defending the Christian faith and promoting its wisdom against the secular and religious challenges of our day.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Does the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage Open the Door to Other Things?

Does the legalization of same-sex marriage provide the slippery-slope for the legalization of other forms of marriage like polygamy? Many would claim that it does! However, those who are instrumental in legalizing same-sex marriage deny the slippery-slope:

• Chief Justice Robert Bauman criticized this view for “miss[ing] the whole point.” “Committed same-sex relationships celebrate all of the values we seek to preserve and advance in monogamous marriage,” he said, adding that the “doctrinal underpinnings of monogamous same-sex marriage are indistinguishable from those of heterosexual marriage.” http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/polygamy-ruling-revisited-judge-takes-swipe-at-alarmist-views-of-gay-marria?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d096ce6082-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines11_29_2011&utm_medium=email

However, there are good reasons to expect that opening this door will undermine the institution of marriage. For one thing, gays are known to be notoriously promiscuous. Psychiatrist and Yale and Harvard lecturer, Jeffrey Satinover writes that while sexual faithfulness is relatively high among married heterosexuals – “90 percent of women and more than 75 percent of heterosexual men have never engaged in extramarital sex” – the picture among gay men is very different:

• A 1981 study revealed that only 2 percent of homosexuals were monogamous or semi-monogamous – generally defined as ten or fewer lifetime partners…A 1978 study found that 43 percent of male homosexuals estimated having sex with five hundred or more different partners…Seventy-nine percent said that more than half of these partners were total strangers. (Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, 55)

Perhaps more important is Judge Bauman’s faulty reasoning. He claims that the “doctrinal underpinnings of monogamous same-sex marriage are indistinguishable from those of heterosexual marriage.” On the basis of what? Certainly, his contention isn’t based upon what is physically natural, or what bears children, or the teachings of any of the major world religions. It’s based on one thing only – the right to choose!

Therefore, if marriage is based upon the right to choose, then there is no longer any rationale to deny the right to choose to the polygamist or the pedophile. (After all, why should the right to choose be denied to the adolescent? Already, they can choose to engage in sex or to have an abortion!)

Society has opened a wide door. Soon, we will find that we can no longer shut it. Besides, there will be few left who even want to shut it.